Continuity of Agenda: Trump Administration White-Washes Bush-Obama-Biden-backed Al-Qaeda in Syria

May 29, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - US President Donald Trump announced during his May 2025 trip to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia that the US would be lifting long-standing sanctions on Syria, Reuters reported. 

Reuters would also claim: 

The end of sanctions on Syria would be a huge boost for a country that has been shattered by more than a decade of civil war. Rebels led by current President Ahmed al-Sharaa toppled President Bashar al-Assad last December.

During this same trip, President Trump would also meet and shake hands with the current Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani who - before taking power - headed the still US State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization  al-Nusrah Front, (now referred to as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham or HTS).

In reality, the conflict in Syria was not a civil war, but rather a proxy-war waged by the US alongside its Persian Gulf allies, Turkey, and Israel against the Syrian Arab Republic. 

The US sanctions President Trump is now lifting were designed to cripple the Syrian government, economy, and military, prevent reconstruction and economic recovery, and devastate the civilian population, all to hollow out the Syrian state to precipitate its eventual collapse as former US Department of Defense official Dana Stroul stated publicly in 2019. 

The proxy-war included a US-led campaign training, funding, equipping, and arming a network of extremists including al-Sharaa/al-Jolani’s terrorist al-Nusrah/HTS. 

Throughout the conflict in Syria, even US-based publications like the New York Times admitted as early as 2012 the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was facilitating the flow of billions of dollars in weapons, ammunition, and equipment from Turkey into Syria. 

While the official narrative was the US had been arming “moderate rebels,” no explanation was given as to how or why terrorist organizations like al-Nusrah/HTS quickly ended up dominating the Western-backed militancy. If the US and its allies were providing billions in aid to “moderate rebels,” who was providing even greater amounts of aid to extremist organizations allowing them to dominate the US-backed proxy-war in Syria? 

Trump Plays Role in Decades-Spanning Proxy-War Waged by the “Deep State” 

The answer is simple - there were never any “moderate rebels.” The US planned years before the conflict even began to use extremists as proxies to overthrow governments across the region, including Syria’s. 

Seymour Hersh as early as 2007 in his New Yorker article, “The Redirection,” warned: 

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Preparations to build up militant groups as well as their political wings - especially the Muslim Brotherhood  - were already ongoing when Hersh wrote his 2007 article and continued until the US-engineered “Arab Spring” unfolded in 2011 under the Obama administration. 

The New York Times would admit in an April 2011 article that: 

A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington, according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

The same article also admitted: 

The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department.

The chaos the US-engineered “Arab Spring” created was used as an opportunity to launch multi-wars and proxy-wars across the region including a NATO-led regime change operation against Libya in North Africa, a US-backed Saudi-led coalition targeting Ansar Allah in Yemen, and the US proxy-war in Syria which eventually involved the US invasion and occupation of eastern Syria while NATO-member Turkey invaded and occupied its northern regions. 

Washington’s “Golden Dome” - Multi-Trillion Tax Dollar Heist at Best, Dangerous Provocation at Worst

May 25, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - US President Donald Trump has announced his administration has chosen the architecture for the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system, claiming it will cost $175 billion and be operational in “less than three years” with a “success rate close to 100%.”

During President Trump’s announcement on May 21, 2025, it was claimed the Golden Dome will consist of technology deployed across land, sea, and space capable of intercepting hypersonic, ballistic, and advanced cruise missiles, “even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space.” 

Former-US President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program (also known as the Strategic Defense Initiative) was repeatedly cited during the announcement. That program sought to use space-based weapons to void the doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” allowing the US to conduct a nuclear or non-nuclear first strike on another nation and avoid what had otherwise been an inevitable nuclear retaliation that would destroy both nations in the process.  

Specifically because mutually assured destruction was seen as a better deterrence against a first strike by one nuclear-armed nation against another, along with concerns over costs, technological limitations, and then-existing arms control treaties like the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), the initiative was never fully realized. 

Granting the US Impunity to Attack, Not “Defend” Itself

US Space Force General Michael Guetlein, picked to lead the Golden Dome project and present during its announcement, would claim: 

As you're aware our adversaries have become very capable and very intent on holding the homeland at risk. While we have been focused on keeping the peace overseas, our adversaries have been quickly modernizing their nuclear forces, building out ballistic missiles capable of hosting multiple warheads, building out hypersonic missiles capable of attacking the United States within an hour and traveling at 6,000 mph, building cruise missiles that can navigate around our radar and our defenses and building submarines that can sneak up on our shores and worse yet, building space weapons. It is time that we change that equation and start doubling down on the protection of the homeland.

Yet what General Guetlein calls “keeping the peace overseas,” is in reality the United States encroaching along the borders and shores of nations like Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea. 

This includes the stationing of not only missile defense systems like Patriot, THAAD, and the Aegis Ashore system in close proximity to these nations in violation of the ABM treaty the US has since abandoned, but also first-strike offensive weapons like the Typhon missile launcher capable of firing both Standard SM-6 anti-air missiles, but also ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles previously prohibited under the INF treaty the US has also since abandoned. 

US War on Yemen Exposes Limits of American Military Might

May 13, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Yemen, a nation of approximately 40 million people, is one of the poorest nations on Earth. It has suffered decades of political instability including a US-engineered regime change operation in 2011 followed by a nearly 7 year long war with a US-armed and backed Saudi-led Persian Gulf coalition. The war included air strikes and a ground invasion along with economic sanctions and a naval blockade. Subsequently, the UN has declared Yemen to be one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises with up to 14% of the population displaced by conflict.

Since then, the US has carried out direct attacks on Yemen. Both the previous Biden administration and now the current Trump administration have carried out military campaigns in a bid to subdue Ansar Allah (often referred to as the “Houthis”) - the military and political organization administering Yemen’s capital and surrounding cities along the nation’s western coast.

The most recent military campaign has included strikes on civilian infrastructure including a major port and reportedly a reservoir.  

Leaked messages between the US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the US Vice President and other senior officials reveal the deliberate targeting and complete destruction of residential buildings to kill a single suspected enemy individual. 

Despite the tremendous power of the US military and the protracted brutality the US has applied to Yemen, Ansar Allah remains a viable political and military organization. It continues to target and destroy US drones conducting surveillance and attacks in Yemeni airspace, as well as targeting US warships in the Red Sea, amid a much wider blockade Ansar Allah has placed on Israeli-bound vessels and now US oil shipments. 

While Ansar Allah has regularly claimed to have targeted and forced US warships to flee, a recent CNN article appears to confirm that indeed drones and anti-shipping missiles targeting US ships have not only forced them to take evasive maneuvers, they have also caused material losses including a $60 million F-18 warplane. 

The article admits:

A US official said initial reports from the scene indicated the Truman made a hard turn to evade Houthi fire, which contributed to the fighter jet falling overboard. Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed on Monday to have launched a drone and missile attack on the aircraft carrier, which is in the Red Sea as part of the US military’s major operation against the Iran-backed group.

Other Western media outlets have admitted the loss of multiple $30 million drones over Yemen. An April 29, 2025 article by France 24 reported that the US had lost up to 7 MQ-9 Reaper drones over the previous 2 months. 

US Ditching Ukraine “Peace Talks,” Predictable Continuity of Agenda Follows

May 6, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Despite running for office promising to resolve the conflict in Ukraine within “24 hours,” US President Donald Trump and the special interests he serves intended before even taking office to continue the war in Ukraine - while also pivoting eastward to pursue a similar conflict with China in the Asia-Pacific region. 

This was summarized in corporate-financier funded Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” policy papers published in 2023. Under chapter 4, “Department of Defense,” written by previous Trump administration official Christopher Miller, it noted: 

U.S. allies must take far greater responsibility for their conventional defense. U.S. allies must play their part not only in dealing with China, but also in dealing with threats from Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

And that it was important to: 

…transform NATO so that U.S. allies are capable of fielding the great majority of the conventional forces required to deter Russia while relying on the United States primarily for our nuclear deterrent, and select other capabilities while reducing the U.S. force posture in Europe. 

Just weeks after taking office, and despite the Trump administration insisting it sought an end to the conflict in Ukraine, President Trump’s secretary of defense Pete Hegseth would deliver a contradictory directive to Washington’s European partners in Brussels, explaining: 

The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail. 

It also noted:. 

As the United States prioritizes its attention to these threats, European allies must lead from the front. 

Together, we can establish a division of labor that maximizes our comparative advantages in Europe and Pacific respectively. 

To “lead from the front,” Secretary Hegseth urged Europe to spend more on defense including spending up to 5% of each nation’s GDP on NATO as well as for Europe to “double down and re-commit” to “Ukraine’s immediate security needs,” as well as expand Europe’s defense industrial base.

More alarmingly, Secretary Hegseth called for European troops to serve as “peacekeepers” in Ukraine as part of a non-NATO security guarantee. 

While Secretary Hegseth specifically said during his remarks in Brussels that “this must not be Minsk 3.0,” what he was describing couldn’t be called anything else. 

US Plays “Mediator” in its Own War on Russia

April 22, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Recent comments from current US Secretary of State Marco Rubio have signaled Washington’s intent to abandon peace efforts if progress isn’t made between Russia and Ukraine.

CNN in a recent article has reported that: 

The United States could end its efforts on ending the Ukrainian conflict within “days” if there are no signs of progress, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Friday. 

“If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” he told reporters before departing Paris, where he had held high-level talks with European and Ukrainian officials. “We need to determine very quickly now, and I’m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable,” he said. 

This is framed as if the US is serving as some sort of mediator between Russia and Ukraine. In reality, the US is one of two primary parties to the conflict - the other being Russia with whom this war was provoked. 

A US War on Russia Since the Cold War Ended… 

The US had since the end of the Cold War invested billions of dollars in political interference within Ukraine, including regime change operations attempted in 2004 and successful regime change finally taking place in 2014. From 2014 onward, Ukraine was transformed into a military proxy of the United States aimed specifically to threaten the Russian Federation just as a politically captured Georgia in 2003 was used to attack Russian peacekeeping forces in 2008. 

The growing security threat this posed to Moscow precipitated the launching of Russia’s February 2022 Special Military Operation (SMO) and the subsequent fighting that has continued ever since. 

A series of articles from the Western media itself has revealed over recent years the degree to which the US had not only politically captured Ukraine, but also institutionally captured its military and intelligence agencies, reconfiguring them to operate as armed extensions of the US along Ukraine’s border with Russia, and even across it within Russia itself. 

Among these admissions is the New York Times’ February 2024 article titled, “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin,” which admits to, “a C.I.A.-supported network of spy bases constructed in the past eight years that includes 12 secret locations along the Russian border.”